Belive it or not, I’ve never done stained glass before (shocker- I know- considering there is rarely a craft I haven’t tackled). I’m fairly proficient at fused glass, and stained glass is only a short jump away….but there are so many more steps involved in stained glass. It’s not just something I can pick up on my own.
So, a few weeks ago when an old college friend of mine called to tell me that he was teaching a stained glass class at a local artists guild, I jumped right on board. I talked another friend of mine into joining the class with me, and now we both really look forward to our Thursday night ladies night out.
I’ve done two smaller sample pieces up to now, just so I could get a feel for the solder, copper foil, and the soldering gun, but now I’m working on my first “real” piece.

My first piece is a tiki man peeking out behind some tropical leaves. Here’s my sketch for my design-

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It took me about 15 hours of cutting and grinding to get all the pieces to fit- here it is as soon as I fit the last piece into the “puzzle” (it’s all dirty from the grinder and covered with sharpie markings– but I was proud nonetheless!)

I gave all the pieces a bath (and washed off their numbers….which made putting the pieces back together that much harder!)
Squeaky clean!

Wrapping each piece with copper foil is just slightly less time-consuming than the actual cutting and grinding…

All foiled and ready to solder!

Here I am soldering

Here’s a picture of my friend diligently soldering her piece

She finished hers tonight~

Check back next week to see the finished product!

I’m linking up to the Clip Cafe’s My Wonderful WIP but I can’t figure out how to get the button on here! So follow the link to see what others are working on!